sure they’ll kill you, father,” Jill sobbed.
“Why me, my boy?”
“Because they kill all the prettiest men,” said the innocent boy.
Then came a few busy days and tearful days, and – then my father was gone. The scene of the departure of the soldiers for the war is something I will never forget. What made it all the worse was, that in returning home our carriage was blocked by a mob, and we had to witness the passing by of a soldier’s funeral. It was inexpressibly sad, and I remember my dear mother wept on auntie’s breast, till I verily believed her heart would break.
From that very date our bed was made up in mother’s own room. We were all she had now. Besides, something must have told her that she would not even have us long.
Children’s sorrows do not last very long, their souls are very resilient, and this is wisely ordered. So by the time we got father’s first letter we had learned to live on in happy hope of soon seeing him back.
Letter after letter came; some that told of the fighting were sad enough, but there was no word of our soldier father returning from the wars.
One day we were all seated at breakfast and talking quite cheerfully, when the postman’s thrilling rat-tat was heard at the door. That knock always did make us start, now that father was away at the wars. And this very morning, too, we had watched the postman till he went past and disappeared round the corner, so he must have forgotten our letter and come with it on his return. Sally came in with it at last, but seemed to take such a long time.
“It’s from the Cape, ma’am,” she said, “and it isn’t in black.”
Girls are so thoughtless.
I cannot tell you how it was, but neither Jill nor I could take our eyes off poor ma’s face when she took the letter, tore it open, and began to read. A glance at the envelope told her it was his dear handwriting, so a gleam of joy came into her eyes, and a fond smile half-played round her lips. Alas! both the gleam and the smile were quickly banished, and were succeeded by a look of utter despair. Oh, my beautiful mother, how dazed and strange she appeared! One glance round the table, then the letter dropped from her fingers, and we rushed to support her.
But the flood of tears came now fast enough, and as she threw herself on the sofa in a paroxysm of grief, we really thought her heart would break.
Speak she could not for a time.
“Oh, mother dear, what is it?”
“Tell us, mother, tell us all.”
“Is father killed?”
The sight of our anguish probably helped to stem for a time the current of her own.
“N-no,” she sobbed. “Father is not killed – but he is wounded – slightly, he says, – and, I must go away to him.”
Here she hugged us to her breast.
“It will not be for long, children – only just a little, little time – and you must both be so good.”
Our turn had come now – our very hearts seemed swamped as the great grief came swelling over them, like the waves of the ocean. She let us weep for a time, she made no attempt either to repress our tears or to stop our senseless, incoherent talk.
“You cannot go. You must not leave us.”
This, and this alone, was the burden of our song. Alas! the fiat had gone forth, and in our very souls we knew and felt it. Once more she kissed us, then auntie led us out, saying we must leave mamma a little while for her good. We would do anything for ma’s good, even to going away into the schoolroom – which never before had looked so grim and cheerless – and squatting on our goatskin to cry. Every now and then poor Jill would say —
“Don’t you cry so, Jack.”
And every now and then I would make the same request to him.
They say there is no love equal to that a mother bears for a child; but tell me this, ye who have known it, what love exceeds that which a fond and sensitive child bears for a mother? and oh, what else on earth can fill the aching void that is left when she is gone?
For a time weeping gave us relief, then even that consolation was taken away. I just felt that my life’s lamp had clean gone out, that there was no more hope —could be no more hope for me.
It was difficult to realise or grasp all the terrible truth at once. Mother going away! Our own dear darling mother, and we, perhaps never, never to see her more! Never listen to her voice again at eventide, singing low to us by the firelight, or telling us tales by our bedside! Never kneel again by her knees to pray! Never feel again her soft good-night kisses, nor the touch of her loving hands! Never – but here the tears returned, and once more Jill and I wept in each other’s arms.
In times of grief like this I think the mind is more highly sensitised, as a photographic artist would say, and takes and retains impressions more quickly. For the minutiae even of that sad eventful morning are still retained in my memory in a remarkable way. I remember the slightest sounds and most trivial sights heard or seen by Jill and me as we sat in our listless grief by the window. I remember the yelp of a little cur we used to pity, because it was always tied up; the laugh of a street carter as he talked to a neighbour; the dreary, intermittent tapping of the twig of a rose-bush against the glass; the low boom of the breaking waves. I remember it was raining; that the wind blew high across the sea; that the sea itself was grey and chafing, and apparently all in motion in one direction, like some mighty river of the new world; I remember the dripping bushes in the front garden, and the extra-green look of the rain-varnished paling around it; and even the little pools of water on the street, and the buffeted appearance of the few passengers striving to hold umbrellas up against the toilsome wind.
Mother came quietly in, and – she was smiling now.
How much that smile cost her, mothers alone may tell, but even we knew it was a smile without, to hide the grief within.
Mother went away.
For many a long month now there was a blank, a void in our hearts and in our home that nothing could fill.
Except Hope.
“Hope springs eternal in the human breast.” Truer words were never spoken. When Hope dies, Life itself is soon extinct.
Auntie Serapheema did all she could now to cheer us. She was far less prim and stern with Jill and me. One o’clock struck no more on his knuckles nor on mine. She even shortened our school hours, and was easier with us in the matter of “ologies” and “ographies.” Letters came frequently and with great regularity, and they were always cheerful. Father was better, and mother would be happy if they could both get home, and they hoped to. Yes, they hoped to, but no letter said when, or how soon that hope might be realised.
But one of the most cheerful letters was from father himself, in which he said he trusted to be able to send us both into the Royal Navy as cadets. To be naval officers had always been our dream of dreams, Jill’s and mine. To wear the grand old uniform of blue and gold, to tread the snowy quarter-deck with swords by our side, and the white flag fluttering in the sunshine overhead —
“The flag that braved a thousand years,
The battle and the breeze – ”
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